The Apothecary, a blog about health care and entitlement reform, is edited by Avik Roy, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a former health-care policy adviser to Mitt Romney. Avik also writes a weekly column on politics and policy for National Review.
The other contributors to The Apothecary are: Josh Archambault, Director of Health Care Policy at the Pioneer Institute in Boston; Robert Book of the American Action Forum; Chris Conover, Research Scholar in the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University and an Adjunct Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; Nicole Fisher of the University of North Carolina; John R. Graham of the Advanced Medical Technology Association; and Jeet Guram of Harvard Medical School.

Co-authored with Nic Horton, Policy Research Analyst at the Foundation for Government Accountability.

Increased Medicaid enrollment has long been heralded as a rare “success” of the ObamaCare rollout. Recently, CMS released a new report boasting about increasing enrollment in Medicaid. “These gains are made possible by collaboration between CMS and the states that operate these programs,” CMS said. But how many of the new 6 million enrollees actually meet the eligibility requirements for Medicaid?

Some state officials have started to push back on the claims of the Obama Administration on Medicaid, and a few have quietly started to remove ineligible individuals that have been enrolled due to continued issues with the federal website. The few examples that have become public from around the country call into question the validity of these Medicaid enrollment numbers, painting a dire picture for taxpayers and the truly needy.

Last July,the Obama administration announced that — by executive directive — it would delay ObamaCare’s income verification requirements. Instead, individuals who wanted to purchase health insurance through the ObamaCare exchange would be on the “honor system” and self-report their income without any proof necessary. This change was only supposed to effect enrollees in state-based exchanges, but problems with HealthCare.gov have created chaos for states with a federal exchange as well.

States continue to grapple with the collateral damage of ObamaCare’s implementation. Unfortunately, the bungling of the health law’s rollout is wasting even more taxpayer dollars and hurting even more patients in need.

Soon to be Secretary of HHS Sylvia Mathews Burwell may have to answer for the growing number of improperly enrolled individuals onto Medicaid under the ACA due to continued issues with healthcare.gov. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The Federal “Fix”

The federal government’s failure to verify applicant income has put states in an unworkable situation: there is no way to determine if an applicant should go into Medicaid, into an exchange plan, or if that applicant is eligible for any type of taxpayer-funded subsidies at all. To “solve” this problem, the administration announced in December that it would provide states “flat files” of incomplete eligibility information obtained during the exchange application process, but, in the meantime, would allow states to go ahead and enroll individuals in Medicaid. Even the loudest cheerleaders for ObamaCare could’ve envisioned how horribly wrong this might go.

Politicosaid at the time that this maneuver by the administration forced states to:

decide whether they’re willing to risk the integrity of their Medicaid programs to sign up people faster.

Some states rolled the dice; now patients and taxpayers are being forced to settle up with the house.

Fraudulent Medicaid Enrollment Surges

Last December, HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said, “Claims from some states about our process for testing the Medicaid eligibility and enrollment systems are inaccurate.” It appears her information is as incomplete as the fed’s income verification data.

Texas

Take, for example, Jason Hawkins of Plano, Texas. Mr. HawkinsHawkins earns $50,000 a year and has a family of three. Based on his income, he is ineligible for Medicaid, but the fed’s HealthCare.gov gave him the go-ahead for free taxpayer-funded health care.

Texas officials also confirmed other major flaws in the files they received from the federal government. Many of the applicants supposedly eligible for Medicaid in Texas included people who didn’t even live in the state and people who are already signed up for Medicaid.

Florida

By February, the federal government provided data on tens of thousands Floridians it determined to be eligible for Medicaid based on applications processed by the ObamaCare exchange. After review, Florida officials found that much of the data was entirely unreliable, containing duplicate applicants and applicants that were obviously ineligible for Medicaid.

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